by John Nichol
Both Vigors and Edridge had been in the thick of action since Dunkirk, when they were ordered into combat for the first time. Vigors had been scared: ‘My mouth was dry and for the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the expression “taste of fear”. I suddenly realised that the moment had arrived . . . Within an hour I would be battling for my life . . . Up until now it had all somehow been a game, like a Biggles book where the heroes always survived the battles and it was generally only the baddies who got the chop. I knew I had somehow to control this fear and not show it to my fellow pilots.’30
Flying out of Hornchurch, they were quickly into the action in late August to meet another incursion. Vigors had made a tight left-hand diving turn to evade a fighter when a Dornier 17 appeared right in front of him, just 200 yards away. ‘As I prepared to fire, the Dornier exploded, and a Spitfire, with guns still blazing, followed it down. I saw the registration letters of Hilary’s aircraft on the side of the fuselage. I yelled with delight!’
But Edridge took no pride in killing his fellow man. During dinner, his girlfriend recounted her father’s excitement at the sight of two Spitfires taking out a Dornier.31 His face reddened, and he asked her where and at what time the fight had taken place. Then he spoke very quietly. ‘One of those pilots was me.’
She asked him several more questions, but the loss of life, and what had happened to him on a sortie later the same day, had darkened his mood.
Edridge had been confronted with the terrifying prospect of burning to death in his cockpit. His Spitfire had been hit in the petrol tank and immediately caught fire. The flames licked his ankles then moved up his legs. His first reaction had been gratitude that the daily struggle to stay alive was finally over. He put up his hand to make the sign of the cross but his arm was constrained by his parachute harness.
He paused.
At the very least, he had to try to bail out. He had a duty to fight for his life.
Thankfully, the canopy flew back and he made a good getaway. He allowed himself to fall closer to earth before pulling the D-ring of his parachute. Some Germans, aware that RAF pilots who bailed out were quickly returning to the fray, had taken to machine-gunning them that day.
Edridge landed safely between the trees, albeit on the back of a sheep, at Broome Park in Kent. He peered skywards, made the sign of the cross, then looked down at his burnt legs. It was nothing, really, compared to some of the things he’d seen. He’d recover soon enough to fight again.
* * *
Unlike Edridge, who had at least had some combat experience over Dunkirk, some pilots arrived on operations having barely fired the Spitfire’s guns.
After just three weeks of Spitfire training, and a few patrols from Biggin Hill devoid of any action, Bernard Brown decided to go on a foray. He drove his J-type MG up to London, parking it outside the Wagon and Horses on Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus. Independent-minded and generally underwhelmed by authority, Brown had not bothered to register the car. Emerging from the pub he spotted a policeman standing next to the MG.
‘Where’s your registration?’ the officer asked.
‘In the pocket of the car,’ Brown bluffed, hoping his RAF fighter pilot uniform might buy him some leeway. It did.
‘OK, then, I shan’t look,’ the policeman said. ‘But where are you heading to?’
‘Biggin Hill.’
Spotting the glint of alcohol in Brown’s eyes, the officer offered to drive him back, perhaps in the knowledge that the mess had decent beer, including Scotch Ale.
Brown was not wrong. ‘Sure enough, that’s what he was angling for. I invited him in for a drink. He had to borrow my sports jacket as he still had a police uniform on. I supplied him with plenty of free beer.’ The hours passed and Brown wondered what to do. He did not have to worry for long. A few minutes later, a police car rolled up to the mess to collect the inebriated officer.
A few days later Brown was back at the Officers’ Mess bar and looking forward to a break. At 2am, he was still taking advantage of the fact that he would not be flying that day when his Flight Commander approached him. ‘Pity it’s meant to be your day off,’ he said. ‘You’re on at six.’
Brown gave a laconic shrug of the shoulders, finished his drink and headed to bed. He was fast asleep in the dispersal room when the phone shrieked its warning, and he’d barely had time to wipe the sleep from his eyes when he was tearing down the airstrip. On the squadron leader’s command of ‘Buster’ he engaged the emergency boost, giving himself another 34mph to gain height.
Within minutes he found himself under attack.
‘They were all over me. I didn’t have any time for fear but it was a brutal introduction to the battle. They came down on me all guns blazing. Bullets, shells all over the place. Then there was a 109 below me. I was turning madly at the time. He must have pulled his nose up and let fly. A cannon shell came through the side of my aircraft and hit me in the left leg, exploding on the throttle box underneath my left arm. There was no control of the aeroplane whatsoever; the engine was roaring its life out and I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t do anything. I just thought, “Right, Brown, this is the time.”
‘I had to remember what had now become the most important lesson of all – bailing out! I hadn’t had any official instructions but a friend had told me what to do if I ever had to jump out. Funnily enough, I remembered the drill exactly. “Take your helmet off, because it’s connected to the aeroplane by the cables and you’ll probably get hung.” So I took my helmet off and remember hanging it on the hook in the cockpit. “Right, now undo the straps.” We always went into action with the hood open because if a bullet went through the mechanism it might not slide back. I just undid the straps and thought: “Right, here we go.” I turned the aircraft on its back and that was that.
‘I don’t remember much but the next moment I knew I was out and I could feel air rushing past my face. Then no air. I was turning over and over, spinning as I fell. I thought I’d better find that D-ring which was tucked underneath my left arm. I gave it a quick pull and then it all went dead quiet.
‘I felt quite happy to be honest, I was free. I landed in the marsh, just out from Eastchurch airfield. Although I’d been blasted by the exploding shell, I couldn’t feel any pain. But when I landed I just collapsed and folded up. That’s when I discovered I had a big hole in my left leg.
‘I looked up and saw a bloke from the Home Guard coming towards me. He got about ten yards away and stopped. He didn’t say a word. Just covered me with his .303 rifle.
‘Fortunately, an RAF truck came across the field. The blokes lifted me on but the Home Guard chap still didn’t say a word and was still covering me with his rifle. I was more frightened about him than anything else.’
Brown joined the growing number of wounded. The 109’s bullet had put a hole in his knee, destroying the tendons. Another Spitfire pilot – along with his aircraft – had been blasted from the fray. Casualties like Brown, and his Spitfire, were not easily replaced.
Speaking from their home in New Zealand, Bernard’s wife had warned me her husband remembered little about the war, but once he began to reminisce during our interview the cobwebs of time fell away and it was as though he was back in the cockpit of his beloved Spitfire that day. Sadly, Bernard died a few months after I spoke to him and would not live to see this book published.
SEPTEMBER 1940
Despite the fortitude of its airmen, the RAF was losing control of the skies over south-east England. And that was all the Germans needed.
Surely, some in the Luftwaffe asked, they had established sufficient air superiority to cover amphibious landings along the south coast before the autumn storms set in? It was early September and the seas were calm.
Fighter Command’s boss, Keith Park, understood the gravity of the situation. He issued an order to 11 Group that in the event of invasion they should prepare to fly eight sorties a day, landing only to refuel and rearm.
German p
ride had just taken a battering when ninety-five RAF bombers penetrated Berlin’s defences, causing some damage and killing ten civilians. Infuriated, Hitler acceded to Goering’s request to blitz London. The RAF, Goering argued, would throw up their last fighter reserves to protect the capital. These would be dealt with, London flattened and Britain’s morale destroyed.
The battle for Britain’s existence was about to enter its decisive phase. It was a desperate time, and it called for desperate measures.
* * *
Rugger, rock-climbing, cricket and camping holidays had been uppermost in the minds of the young sergeant pilots who had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in the mid-1930s. War for the likes of Ray Holmes had seemed a distant possibility when, on the recommendation of the acclaimed racing driver E. B. Ware, he joined the reserves. At that point Holmes, from Liverpool, was a cub reporter on the Birkenhead Advertiser, so the idea of an intensive ten-week course learning to fly followed by weekends in aircraft was appealing. And the £25 annual bonus helped too, for it could buy a young reserve pilot a good second-hand car. The only other demand was that if war broke out the Volunteer Reserves would be mobilised immediately into the regular RAF.
So in 1939 Holmes had been rapidly drafted but then found himself kicking his heels in Scotland while all the action was going on down south. Then in late summer 1940, the Hurricanes of 504 Squadron were suddenly sent south to protect London.
Thus, on 15 September 1940, Sergeant Holmes was over central London among a swarm of Dornier bombers. After making one attack Holmes banked away then, when he came in again, found the sky seemingly empty but for a lone Dornier that appeared to be making a bomb run on Buckingham Palace.32 Holmes had expended most of his ammunition helping to break up the thirty-strong bomber formation heading for the city. As he went to engage the Dornier in a head-on attack, his guns spluttered to a halt.
The story is picked up in an account Holmes later gave to a newspaper reporter:33
‘He was hurtling straight for the Dornier. In a moment he must break away. But the German pilot had not deviated an inch from his course. There was only one way to stop him now. Hit him for six. In the heat of battle, with his own machine crippled and in a desperate bid to smash the invader before it broke through to his target, he shunned the instinct to turn away. How flimsy the Dornier tailplane looked as it filled his windscreen. The tough little Hurricane would shatter it like balsa wood. As he aimed his port wing at the nearside fin of the Dornier’s twin tail, he was sweating. He felt only the slightest jar as the wing of the Hurricane sliced through. Incredibly, he was getting away with it. The Hurricane was turning slightly to the left and diving a little. Suddenly the dive turned vertical, Holmes was heading down to the ground at 500mph. After a struggle Holmes managed to bail out. The scene of the Dornier, Hurricane and parachute coming to earth was watched by hundreds of grateful Londoners. The Dornier that seemed intent on bombing Buckingham Palace had been brought to earth. It was one of the many acts of heroism seen during the battle.’34
The ‘Buckingham Palace Dornier’ was among the fifty-six German aircraft shot down that day. The RAF lost half that number. It was a decisive victory.
The Blitz over London would continue for many months, but, thanks to the bravery of Ray Holmes and his colleagues, the tide was beginning to turn as German attacks were repelled. There would finally be some respite from the relentless barrages on the home defences, giving the airfields, aircraft and airmen a chance to reform and reorganise. Despite the devastation, London could take the hits.
The use of Spitfires to tackle the fighters, and Hurricanes to take on the bombers, had proved highly effective. Their success sapped German morale.
‘The Spitfires showed themselves wonderfully manoeuvrable,’ Max-Hellmuth Ostermann recounted. ‘Their aerobatics display – looping and rolling, opening fire in a climbing roll – filled us with amazement.’35
Some Germans had simply had enough and reluctance to cross the Channel in the teeth of British resistance increased. The Germans called it Kanalkrankheit – Channel sickness.
Goering was having none of it. He strode into the forward headquarters in Pas-de-Calais, berating senior officers and seasoned pilots for failing to protect the bombers.
Meeting stony silence, Goering became more emollient and asked what they needed. One pilot replied that more powerful engines were required. The request was granted.
Then the Reichsmarschall turned to the distinguished ace, Adolf Galland. ‘And you?’
‘A squadron of Spitfires,’ Galland boldly replied.36
Goering turned on his heels, speechless in rage.
OCTOBER 1940
The shift from attempting to eliminate the RAF to unleashing the Blitz on London and other cities provided a respite for the air force, but the civilian population needed its pilots more than ever to protect them. Supermarine in Southampton had already been bombed, with the loss of more than 100 skilled workers.
Life for those living under German bombardment was as terrifying as for those fighting in the skies. At times there was typical British stoicism. The rising star of film Ann Todd was acting in Peter Pan when a particularly bad raid came in and the play was stopped. Todd went on stage to address the audience: ‘Mummies and daddies, aunts, uncles and friends and children, there is a lot of fighting and noise going on outside, so I, Peter, suggest you stay safe and cosy underground with the Lost Boys and me till it’s over.’37
Sometime later, Todd found herself in rather different circumstances, in a corridor in Gerrards Cross nursing home giving birth to her daughter by her fighter pilot husband, Nigel Tangye. ‘The nursing home was packed with pregnant women and when the Germans bombed a wartime engineering factory nearby, this was the moment my Pippin decided to arrive.
‘The lights had all gone out. Nigel was away on duty and I was alone. She was delivered by candlelight to a background of bombs falling out of the sky and the doctor’s voice saying severely to me: “Please concentrate on creation, Mrs Tangye, and ignore the destruction around us.” ’
* * *
Hilary Edridge
After a month spent trying to recover from the wounds he suffered in late August after being shot down, Hilary Edridge left hospital in October intent on fighting, despite his barely healed burns. His friend Tim Vigors was there to welcome him back to the squadron, albeit with some reservation. ‘He shouldn’t have come back so quickly, but he realised we were very short of pilots and he insisted on flying again. I tried to talk him out of it but he was an obstinate devil.’38
Edridge thought better of telling Vigors about the vivid premonition of death he had experienced in hospital. He could not explain why, it had just come to him that he was entering his final days on earth. On one level it gave him an inner peace, a chance to say his goodbyes.
He took to the skies, attacking Germans whenever he could. He helped destroy a 110 and then survived a crash-landing after engine failure.
It was getting late in October. With the threat of autumn gales increasing, the chances of a German invasion were receding. Edridge was sent home to Bath on leave, but a strange mood overtook him. Mournful violin tunes could be heard in his bedroom, alongside the jovial sounds of Gilbert and Sullivan. He said farewell to a schoolfriend. Then, on the last day of his leave, he attended Holy Communion. Afterwards, he asked the priest for confession. Body and soul were now in harmony for what he felt was to come.
On 30 October, 222 Squadron was sent towards a vicious scrap that had spiralled westwards over East Sussex. Edridge was at the back, covering the squadron’s vulnerable tail. Just before they entered the fight, Tim Vigors checked over his shoulder. A sick feeling swept through him. An ugly black cloud had engulfed Edridge’s Spitfire, sending it earthwards.
Edridge was stricken but not dead. He had been shot in the head and the Spitfire’s engine was disintegrating. He regained some control and brought the aircraft down fast over the neatly cropped fields of the Weald. He fought ha
rd to keep it aloft, managing to circle the countryside around the village of Northiam, searching for a flat stretch to land. The altimeter showed he had little time in which to act. He spotted a small valley just beyond the magnificent Lutyens-designed Great Dixter House.
His plane roared towards the building, but at the last moment he managed to lift it clear, crashing into the little valley behind. Staff from Great Dixter ran to the site and found Edridge trapped in the crumpled cockpit. A knife was used to cut him out of the parachute straps then many pairs of caring hands lifted him free. Within minutes an ambulance was rushing him to a field hospital.
But it was not enough. He died two hours later.
On hearing of his great friend’s death, Tim Vigors was stricken. He sat outside the dispersal hut and wept. ‘A wave of misery swept over me. I just couldn’t get my mind to accept it.
‘I went berserk, making myself a thorough nuisance to the enemy. Once I had got it out of my system I was absolutely calm again but I still missed Hilary.’
Hilary Edridge was the 536th pilot to die in the Battle of Britain. Its last but one fatality.
‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few . . .’ Churchill once again captured the nation’s mood.
And alongside his fellow countrymen, he had found a place in his heart for ‘the very small thing that fights like hell’.
The German losses were considerable and near-irrecoverable. The Luftwaffe had more than 2,500 aircrew killed or missing plus nearly 1,000 taken prisoner. The great cohort of combat experience gained in Spain, Norway and France had been severely diminished. The material losses were also high – nearly 2,000 fighters and bombers destroyed. Fighter Command suffered too, with 544 dead, and the RAF losing 1,744 aircraft.
